Electromagnetic interference (EMI) that is introduced into remote controllable systems may cause poor system performance. This detrimental effect occurs because many of such systems combine high speed digital control circuitry with sensitive analog conditioning circuitry. Solutions that attempt to reduce EMI typically utilize hardware techniques, e.g. expensive filtering circuitry, multilayer PC boards, and intricate PC board layout. However each of these solutions adds cost to the system and may not effectively reduce EMI. Consequently many types of sensitive instrumentation that rely on such techniques may produce poor quality data.
Some remote controllable systems use radio frequency (RF) modems that operate using spread-spectrum radio frequencies. In other words, rather than operate at one discrete frequency, the RF modems use a band of frequencies enabling any one RF modem to communicate to any other RF modem. It is desirable, however, to use a single transmitter/receiver pair (point-to-point communication). Many of such modems use a message protocol that specifies the serial number of the receiving modem. While, this type of communication is useful, the user must have some means of determining the serial number of the modem pair--which may be difficult to accomplish.
Finally, system failures can be a source of problems with any type of system. The system may fail either through hardware or software errors. Due to the nature of these types of failures, they may occur on an infrequent or intermittent basis. The intermittent occurrence of the failures, makes identifying and solving the failures problematic.
Thus, a system is needed that can effectively reduce EMI, provide for point-to-point communications, and record system failures.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems as set forth above.